If the towering gray steel gate of Barronia was impressed with the indistinguishable image of a man with flowing black hair as well as a shadowy crown hovering over the top of his head seemed an impressive enough sight, then when the trio lingered closer to Arronsburg—they were in for even more of a boisterous display. For instead of there being one interconnected embroidery as a result of two individual doors, line split down the middle indicating disconnection upon opening of the gates, there were two spearmen on either side of the hulking white doors.
Each facing one another with lance tips aimed high toward the edge of their metallic entrapments while each head hadn’t even bothered to try and face the ground. Upon finally pushing open from before the trio, Arronsburg’s entrance unveiled the inner workings of its kingdom. From the slums of the outer district to the distantly looming skyscrapers and buildings forming the innermost city circled by the second district’s outer wall to the piercing white tower lingering, watching and dominating the airspace from the furthest spot at the kingdom. Where none other than Ruler Arron dwelled with his own abundance of loyal soldiers, servants and followers.
The Prince peered over his shoulder at Talen and Alora. When the Unconquerable shrugged his shoulders, both hands already shoved into the confines of his long black jacket while his sister leaned against his shoulder, Uriel looked back ahead. Nodded to himself. Then led the trio onward as they began to stride across the tiled concrete road mainly paved through the apartment buildings on the sidewalks of the outer district of Arronsburg.
Slowly following, Talen covered his mouth with one hand and lit the end of another joint using his remaining fingers. At the same time, Lora jogged up to walk alongside the Prince.
“Uh….” She dragged, glancing around at the tops of apartment buildings overlooking them. “Why’re we walking straight out in the open?”
“We’re not working yet, it’s just scouting for now. Did you want me to tell the Ruler that we were here to kill a kid who’s been possessed by an immortal Monster so they should give us permission to scale their walls? Next time, I’ll be sure to do that, ‘kay? For now though? Ensure to focus on the world around you, Alora. You might learn a thing about something more than yourself,” Uriel said.
Alora chuckled. “You’re so lucky I can’t hit you.”
“Yeah, I bet that would hurt.”
After the Angel Prince spoke, Illustrious was left to linger behind the noble rushing ahead. Leaving Talen to catch up and pace himself next to his older sister. Detaching the smoking joint stuck to his lips, the young man gestured at the boarded up windows of establishments and overlooking apartment buildings, the homeless people forced to dwell on the corners of crosswalks or within the crooked narrow lane of interconnected alleyways between said infrastructure, finalized by the shady man standing in one of many vacant nooks to deal within a small group of four huddled around one another.
“This place isn’t any different from Barronia, what’s the point of even looking at something as lowly as this?” Tal asked. “I can’t be the only one baffled that your Royal Highness over here hasn’t ordered us to stop, turn around and throw those potheads into whatever weird dimension your King Father stupidly calls a prison.”
“Don’t be a dick, Tal,” Lora said. “Do I seriously have to reign you two in every single second of every day I’m forced to be stuck here?”
“I dunno, that’s a good question. Also a pointless one cuz you already know the answer. Anyway, we’re all on the same page about this Anthony kid, right?”
“What other page is there to be on regarding him?” Uriel asked from ahead them out.
“It’s not like he asked to be possessed by this Monster dude,” Lora said. “Baselessly following what the Crown wants and just killing him because they said we should when he could just be an innocent soul writhing in pain… isn’t that more wrong than whatever it is that beast has planned? Especially if he’s not at full power and just Talen alone can handle him.”
Uriel shrugged. “It matters not. Even if we were to save this child and assuredly kept him under our watch, there is no guarantee more pieces of Monstrum won’t pop up in the distant future. Circumventing all we would have sacrificed for him to continue living just because we wanted to object to an order that should have never been objected to.”
“As long as the King possesses the majority, there’s no point in fussing about anything like that,” Talen said.
Alora tapped the side of her face. “Then how did this dude manage to incarnate to begin with? How many arms did Monstrum split himself across?”
“Eight,” the Prince explained. “Immediately after he split, the King collected each of them and locked then away but seemingly overnight, half vanished without a trace. Leaving only two with the Crown while the last two remain sealed in the Syndicate’s vault.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere…
At the end of a single lone road, concrete ground tiled with dark blue pavement, Anthony gradually approached the looming structure of his grandparents’ home; indomitable golden rays brightening his snowy white skin. After the way his red eyes squinted at the familiar architecture of the wooden home, heights poking out into the sky and shining the unceasing sunlight of the day, Monstrum turned to reflect his vessel’s tan-white face.
“You cherish this place, hm? It does look rather cozy. I see the appeal,” said Malum.
Tony sighed. “Yeah, well—we’re not exactly visiting for a social call. I gotta get you out of me. And fast.”
Malum drifting behind, he walked up the steps of the porch, stopped on top to the welcome carpet and knocked on the front door. Which gave him no response. So he knocked on the door again. No response for the second time.
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‘That’s odd. They didn’t leave me a message or anything saying they were going out. Or… maybe they did? I haven’t been home in a while. Whatever. I’ll just use the key and wait for them to get home.’
Tony kneeled, rummaging under the rug to reveal the front door’s secret key. He inserted it, hearing the snick of the lock release, and slowly entered, only to find his instincts urging him to withdraw almost immediately.
The next step he took was one drenched in blood for what undeniably lay bare below his fragile gaze was an unbelievable tragedy. For both grandparents, each as viciously exposed as the other, were but mutilated and open-eyed corpses whose missing parts, messy insides, as well as decapitated heads were messily strewn across the middle of the vacant living room. From the dried scarlet fluid dirtying the couch he was standing behind, creaking wooden chair in the upper right corner holding his grandma’s skull with a blank dead-eyed stare from her stump atop the seat and the television above it all. Shattered to pieces across the middle directly above his grandfather’s bisected corpse missing its vital headpiece.
Tony was utterly speechless. Only his shrunken, glossy and shivering eyes reflecting the merciless murder could convey any sort of human emotion. Yet even then, what more could he do but fall to his knees? Uselessly fighting the urge to the innermost tears flow the way they so desperately wanted to from the way his eyes shook at the resistance. The desperate quivering of his lip amid the accompaniment of meekly helpless sobbing eventually gave way so the boy could release the most primal a case of hysterical laughter.
Malum ignored him, hiding his hands in the hoodie while walking ahead and moving his head around, clearly scanning the environment. First entering the kitchen, the Disastrous stuck out his bottom lip and tilted his head at the brutal sight of the grandfather’s head stabbed into the wooden desk by the randomly sharpened edge of a kitchen knife before walking through. Stopping in front of the kitchen. Where another hand was pinned to the center of the fridge with another knife embedded into the wrist and tip of each finger. Then, just as he was about to turn around—from out of his eye’s peripheral, the familiar scent of something lingered into his nostrils. Halting Malum dead in his tracks.
“Hey, brat. Get over here. There’s something here the both of us need.”
“I can’t…” Tony’s tearful eyes opened. “I can’t… do anything… anymore…”
Monstrum appeared beside the vessel and kneeled with one hand on his shoulder, glowing red pupils shooting daggers into his face.
“What are you doing? Stand up. You want to avenge them, don’t you? Your grandfather. Your grandmother. They raised you, didn’t they? They were the closest thing you ever had to people who genuinely loved you. Tell me, what type of monster would purposefully send a poor innocent boy to the depths of despair?“
Tony’s breath hitched. He slowly sat up, somberly staring into the Disaster’s glowing scarlet gaze. Claws sinking sunk into the boy’s shoulders, manually angling him so he could turn and stare at the open passageway to the right of the television. Next to the chair holding his grandma’s head. To anyone else, it would have been nothing but a regular doorway anyone could have passed through. But for any newly weakened Fate user? Perceiving the malignant stench of evil aura wafting out from whatever deep chamber that entryway led into was child’s play.
“That’s—“
“I bet that it leads to the rest room. So tell me, boy, are you so powerless that the legs you still have attached to the rest of your body are COMPLETELY INCAPABLE of moving any further? After this pathetically wretched excuse of a tragedy? Don’t you realize how incredibly feeble it is for you to even CONSIDER these hags as your caretakers? You should be lucky someone gave them the warrior’s death they got rather than the moaning and groaning every elder scum has to suffer through these days.”
Just when Tony glared out the corner of his eye, its pupils shrunk into recognizing the Incarnated Eight-Armed Form of the Disastrous Monster God expanding. Growing. Bulging. And bulking. Into unbridled reality in order to effectively decimate any semblance of comparison to the impossibly fantastical fairytales countless Imperial parents had told their children when they were but tiny, ignorant pups. Nobody is prepared for a Monster in reality because they don’t exist, but when one growls and glares right before your eyes? With his own pair upon pair upon pair of gazes all locked onto you? Unprepared isn’t the word. Dread is the sensation.
“Scum like you don’t have any say,” Malum snarled, lifting his lower left hand so Tony’s mouth would automatically unhinge and open. “All they can do is moan and whine at the feeling of their own powerlessness.”
Squirming at the violating feeling of his own mouth opening without the slightest signal indicating his brain to do so, Tony tried to wriggle his arms free before his wrists were bound by black chains and he was forced to fall to both knees. Just as the incessantly muffled screaming drowned into agonized streams of tears pouring down both sides of his faces, Monstrum raised his upper right hand and summoned the misting black limb. So it could hover directly over his palms; lower right hand mimicking the same motion as its upper portion.
“Trust me when I say this, child: there is not a single interesting bone in that completely mortal body. The only purpose you’ll serve is the one you’ll die upholding—being me.”
Outside…
Smoke escaping his mouth, the Unconquerable’s head tilted back while sparkling dark green eyes moved to state upon the Whitlock Family House. Miniature figures of Alora and Prince Uriel shuffling toward the steps of the porch, Tal took the stick from his lips and held it between the tip of both dominant fingers.
“So that’s it, huh?” He asked. “Cozy looking place.”
“You can just tell white people live here,” Alora said.
Uriel shook his head. “Shut up, you two. Look.” He pointed ahead. “The door’s open. Let’s go in and see if the kid—“
Erupting into a bubbling pillar of fire followed by a shockwave that knocked all of them aside, following the spontaneous combustion the house had risen into, embers, flaming piles of rubble and even ashen corpses dropped from the infernal tower burning the clouds to nothing would inhabit the black night sky save for an infinitum of stars. Dark blue aura wavering around Alora the same time emerald Unconquerable Fate started from Talen’s chest and coated the rest of his body, Uriel was the last to rise from where they were thrown only a few feet away from where they were originally walking toward.
“What the hell…” Uriel said through heavy breaths, standing upright while throwing the dust, soot and ash off from each shoulder.
“Looks like we’re too late,“ Alora coughed, swatted her pants dry and sniffled, returning to how she was standing before. Then raised her hand to point straight ahead. “More importantly: that’s him, right?”
Forcing a clawed, whited hand from the center of that putridly everlasting tower of flames, Monstrum’s cackles unleashed from within the second the image of his long-haired appearance finished stepping from within the blaze. Ripping and tearing his vessel’s burnt hoodie to expose the chest scarred with a scratchy black streak oozing mist, the cursed mouth stabbed into his stomach unhinged for the tongue at the end of its throat to swirl around. One could only guess how long the Disastrous had spent locked away. Starved for more than attention for what seemed like decades… felt like eons.
“Looks fucking like it,” Talen said. “So, uh, we’re killing him, right?”
Stopped in place with parted lips, Uriel’s sky blue eyes quivered. Powerlessly staring at the encroaching Monster marked with an extra mouth on his stomach and if that weren’t enough? Also accompanied by two additional arms below the ordinary duo all humans were usually meant to have.
“RIGHT?”
The Prince snapped back to reality. Glancing at the Unconquerable and his Enforcer sister respectively standing at his right and left, Barron exhaled through clenched-together teeth and stepped forward.
“RIGHT!“ Clapping his hands, Uriel called for a golden spear that reshaped from the heavenly-blue aura shielding him from head to toe. “Commence extermination!! No mercy!!”
Talen and Alora looked at him, then nodded. “Roger!”
Grinning from behind the shadows, Monstrum spat one last cackle from the bowels of his throat. Dominant index fingers pressed together at the same time both lower extra arms pushed out from where they laid at the sides of his body.
“GOOD TO SEE YOU AGAIN, IMPUDENT CHILDREN! NOW SHOW ME YOUR BLOOD!! OR BACK DOWN!! HAVING POINTLESSLY TRIED TO SATIATE THE EPITOME OF A CALAMITY!!!”